We specialise in addressing critical global challenges by catalysing change in key systems, from food to apparel, energy to shipping.

About PowerPaired

Forum for the Future believe that people and organisations, working together locally, can help to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy.

From care homes to churches, from business parks to hospitals, from farms to shopping centres – our vision is of a growing number of asset owners partnering with community groups, helping to host a new pipeline of locally owned renewables projects.

Powerpaired is an innovative digital platform designed to bring community energy groups and willing asset owners closer together by creating a curated database of viable land and buildings with willing owners for local community energy groups to search.

It is our aim that PowerPaired will:

reduce the time and cost it takes to secure sites for community energy projects, catalysing the next wave of projects across the UK;

demonstrate the value of community energy to asset owners; and

increase the number of projects in disadvantaged areas.

The platform is currently in beta version and is being piloted within Greater Manchester and London over Q4 2018 and Q1 2019. Via user-testing with asset owners and community energy groups in these regions, we will be refining both the platform and the proposition over the second half of the year.

Business model support

As well as proving the concept, Forum wants to explore its options for a long-term business model for PowerPaired – a business model that provisionally allows for a nationwide launch in 2019, and it being self-sufficient as an enterprise in 2020. This exploration will help to inform our fundraising and business development activities in 2019.

We are looking for an experienced professional to provide pro bono advice and support to the PowerPaired team to explore and test viable business models. This could include:

revenue model

key partnerships, including possible host and delivery partners

resource requirements and cost structure

legal and governance framework

communications and scaling-up strategy

business plan.

We require a relatively small number of days of support between now and March 2019 – perhaps 3-5 days to help coalesce our thinking and outline critical questions / assumptions – developing a Powerpoint deck presenting our initial thinking to project funders in the Spring.

A more detailed business plan and model would need to be developed over the second half of 2019 – in keeping with the timeline envisaged above.